Book Summary and Reviews of Darkness Visible by William Styron

Darkness Visible by William Styron

Darkness Visible

A Memoir of Madness

by William Styron

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  • Published:
  • Aug 1990, 84 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A literary tour de force that chronicles a prize-winning author's descent into an almost suicidal depression.

A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his experience of crippling depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A chilling yet hopeful report from a mental wilderness into which one in ten Americans disappears...enlightening...fascinating." —Chicago Sun-Times

"Compelling...harrowing...a vivid portrait of a debilitating disorder...it offers the solace of shared experience." —The New York Times

This information about Darkness Visible was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

William Styron

William Styron (1925-2006), a native of the Virginia Tidewater, was a graduate of Duke University and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. His books include Lie Down in Darkness, The Long March, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Sophie's Choice, This Quiet Dust, Darkness Visible, and A Tidewater Morning. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Howells Medal, the American Book Award, the Légion d'Honneur, and the Witness to Justice Award from the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation. With his wife, the poet and activist Rose Styron, he lived for most of his adult life in Roxbury, Connecticut, and in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, where he is buried.

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